February 23, 2013

Garrett getting ready for Chip Kelly's offense in Philly, not concerned about Kiffin's woes at USC

Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said the coaching move in Philadelphia from Andy
Reid to Chip Kelly presents a huge challenge for his team.

Kelly will bring the wide-open, fast-paced offense to Eagles
that he used successfully in Oregon.
The Cowboys have gotten a taste of some of the college-style schemes with
quarterbacks Robert Griffin III and Cam Newton in Washington
and Carolina,
respectively, but no one does it like Kelly.

"The challenges that Chip Kelly presents are
obvious," Garrett said. "Certainly, a great track record at Oregon. He’s just a darn
good football coach, and he’s bringing that style of football to the NFL. I
think we have seen glimpses of that the last couple of years where there has
been a trickle up of college offenses to the NFL. And they are challenging. And
his style is even different than some of the things we have seen. We are going
to do a lot of studying of what he’s done to make sure we are ready for it
because I think it’s different. It’s different from what a lot of teams have
seen. We are going to get a chance to face him twice and we know what the
challenges are and we have to get ready to go. So we have to get ourselves
up to snuff on how to stop those guys."|

It doesn't appear the Cowboys can turn to defensive
coordinator Monte Kiffin for help. He had trouble stopping Kelly and Oregon the
past two years when he was at USC, giving up an average 601 yards and 50
points a game, including a whopping 731 yards in a 62-51 loss in November.

Garrett, however, says it wasn't a Kiffin problem but a
college-wide problem in being unable to stop Kelly.

"I don’t know that many defenses had a whole lot of success
against what they did there," Garrett said. "If you look at the track
record, he was there for four years. They were pretty good week in and week out
and year in and year out. Again, the challenges will be there. We’re going to
do our best to study it, understand what they’re doing the best we can and get
ourselves ready to go."|